Without humans having a thing to do with it those islands form all the time. They form to a degree that the state has a machine that goes in and destroys the island. All that happens is that any irregularity that causes a bottom to be slightly shallower in a spot will tend to attract plants which over time build a thicker and thicker mat of cast off materials held in place by the roots of the plants. At a certain point the mat becomes heavy enough to actually press down against the bottom and trees and shrubs flourish making the little islands even more solid.
The device that eats these islands looks like a paddle wheel boat with the paddle wheel in the very front of the boat. That wheel beats into the vegetation and pushes it onto a barge like deck. The operator keeps the wheel chopping at the island until the entire island is loaded on the barge. Sadly large nuimbers of bass and other fish as well as snakes and turtles are also loaded onto the barges.
I am pretty sour on the notions of copyright and patents in general. If we had a literary and music patent that expired after five year or so and could not be extended it would seem like a reasonable concept. Music is even more of an issue as music is broadcast. Broadcasting is like throwing bird seed all over town. You simply have no control of which birds get the seed or how often they make use of it. Then it gets even worse. Suppose someone writes a catchy tune for voice and I want to play that tune on trombone. It has never been offered for trombone and is entirely different in nature than when sung. So look how copyright has reached out and covered all instruments playing the piece either together or in separately. Then the written score for the music instead of the music as offered to the ear also requires some magical cloak of copyright protection. I highly recommend copying any damn thing you wish to copy as the rules are an outrage and submission to outrageous rules is bad for the human soul.
Since when do we wish to reward those who lack emotional control above those who remain calm? The ranting screaming caller should be the one served last.
Then there are the other situations in which a veteran, quite used to heavy combat, remains dead calm while trying to summon help. Or an emotionally detached party who is simply not at all upset by mayhem and loss of life but fills the role of trying to help by making the emergency call. The funny thing is that the ones who are not upset are the ones likely to describe well the exact location, number of injuries and be able to warn approaching rescue workers of hazards at the scene such as a downed power line on the north side of the wreck or that pesky sniper who caused the wreck in the first place.
We are closer to the edge of the cliff than most people imagine. For example the recent tragedy in Japan just might collapse the Japanese economy to a degree that a cascade of international banking failures is touched off causing a huge depression world wide.
At the school level we need to neuter most kids allowing only those who are the brightest and strongest to reproduce.
There has always been a suffering factor built into changes in technology spilling over and causing changes in society. Usually the suffering has been rather confined. The buggy whip workers were not such a large group of workers that the new automobile market destroyed. But now things are different and less predictable. A great example is in office staff eliminated by the cell phone. As cell phones took over the small company was able to get rid of millions of girl Friday types that had answered the phones and greeted walk in customers in the past. We are now displacing workers so quickly that economic chaos is descending upon us. After all, earners pay taxes whereas the unemployed consume tax dollars.
Back at home the US has no clue with what to do with labor. Just as we saw people suffer loss of life and health trying to save victims of 9/11 now we see brave,skilled, laborers in Japan entering death zones in order to save the public. I am certain that all that really matters to the republicans is that those workers do not have a union nor want help while they die from radiation sickness just as they will not take care of firemen and police with busted lungs and cancers from the WTC rescue efforts. Frankly if we suffer another attack perhaps our public employees will smarten up and stay far back from such catastrophic events.
In most places game and fish will be exhausted in a day or two if the population gets hungry. Living off the land is always difficult but with a few hundred million people scavenging for all their food it will be impossible to sustain human life even in remote areas. People will follow the food to every little corner.
In a great emergency my chances are very poor of survival. Age and disabilities don't help.
But on a larger scale the real issue is always avoided. Over population and population density are the big nightmare. Haiti is over populated and that leads to poverty, poor construction, poor choice of housing locations and everything needed to amplify any catastrophe. Japan is not poor. The construction must be pretty good as the amount of metal in the debris indicates better than average construction. But because of the population density numerous nuclear power plants were at hand. Further the amount of chemicals spilled from the tsunami as well as issues such as grave yard leakage, gasoline tanks and industrial chemicals spilled and the close proximity of individuals spreading any disease outbreaks is a nightmare. Imagine the same wave hitting the shore and a total of only ten thousand citizens exposed to the hazards. Japan could easily manage the results if the population was not so great. Worse yet, just like our own. their social systems are so locked together than one problem cause many others even in areas not directly affected by the quakes or the waves. We now have a GM factory shut down in Louisiana due to a lack of parts from Japan.
If this tragedy destroys the economy of Japan a world wide depression could easily be a consequence.
Any American officials or companies who stood to gain from this bribery may well face charges in American courts.
Palm Beach County Florida just caught more than a dozen public employees accepting bribes and gifts. Apparently the range of jail sentences will rand from 14 years to 300 years in prison. Florida can go insane over bribes or corruption. We had a land developer near Tampa that moved survey stakes one foot in order to create one additional home lot. He was sentenced to 150 years. And we no longer have good behavior or early release. At most he can get 15% sentence reduction for the convenience of the prison administration. Perhaps the Feds need this kind of sentencing.
They just passed a law which gives schools outrageous powers over students even in their own homes. Bullying is not such a simple issue. Young males often push each other to "buck up". That is to meet the mark, make the grade, ford the stream, beat the hazard or whatever. Name calling and a bit of pushing around are all part of this process. You see it when recruits go into military training. You certainly see it from both staff and students on football and other sports teams.
Yes there are bullies who are sort of mini terrorists who are a pain to all in schools. But many a milder child has made his mark in maturing by fighting back against a bully. This is just normal human behavior.
As far as youngsters who hang themselves over bullying think about how many young boys and girls commit suicide because they are charmed by members of the opposite sex and then rejected. Love is surely more lethal than the school bully who delivers a punch to the nose. Perhaps these school administrators should consider requiring girls and boys to dress in baggy sack cloth with ashes smeared all over them so that we don't see love sick teens offing themselves by the light of the moon.
If total transparency is in play all crime stops dead in its tracks. Every little action would be recorded and available for all to see. Every conversation would be permanently held for all to review. The savings to society would be enormous. Even a doctor prescribing a test too frequently would raise alarms. Lawyers who get poor results for clients or who charge unusually high fees would be outed quickly. Teachers would have every word and action saved fro all to review. The school bully could not get away with the slightest offence. Salesmen would be restrained to the simple, plane truth. Adultery would tend to vanish. Even a high school girl flirting with two boys would quickly be exposed. All in all it sounds great.
Some really strange law and political thinking starts in Texas and infests states north from Texas all the way to the Canadian border. Only God knows what has become of the minds of the people in those states. What is wrong with these people?
The freedom to record all that is around me or said to me is basic. The freedom to know where I have been and be able to offer a proof as to where I am is also basic. Imagine that a crime takes place and the criminal looks a lot like you and also drives a white Toyota. Instead of being half way to a conviction in the legal system you have proof of where you were when the crime went down. Also imagine the cops being able to do a sweeping search and being able to find witnesses and criminals who were within the same area at the time of the crime.
The idea that others may know does not imply a loss of freedom. It does create restraints upon criminals.
Probably the largest amount of criminal activity comes fro women on dating sites trying to scam men into sending money to enable travel to the man. If the government gets serious millions of American women could get severe prison sentences for that game. In law it is not so difficult to offer proof that a woman has promised to travel to live with 75 different men all over the world on the same day and taken money from many of them.
This is an issue like stealing bicycles. Bicycle thefts total far more than bank robbery losses and more deaths result from bicycle thefts than bank robberies as well. Yet a bank robber can easily get 20 years for a first offence and a bicycle thief will rarely be put in prison. We have it backwards.
Stem cells are beyond any argument of ethics or morals. A very strong argument can be made that humans are a filthy, worthless species and that allowing any human baby to be born is the ultimate crime against nature and any act that prevents a human from being born is the ultimate good. After all look at what human life has done to this planet and to each other as well.
So who are these wizards who declare one thing good and the next thing bad? Who appointed any keeper of public morals or wizard of public ethics? Worse yet these creeps find ways to make a living judging what is and is not ethical.
With a true free press nothing may ever be proscribed. A regulated press, regardless of whether well or poorly regulated, is far from being free. The concept that speech deemed offensive or dangerous may be regulated rapes the very foundations of freedom. The consequences of speech poorly received could be social but never carry legal penalties or civil fines etc..
Somehow people also have some sort of assumption of capitalism as part of the Constitution. In fact there is nothing at all to even imply that capitalism be permitted within our system of government. The ability to tax for the general good and maintenance of the nation and its people is a bold faced declaration of socialism.
The patent service is not perfectly screwed up. The Florida Voter Registration System should take charge. If they can steal an election as they already have they can screw up most anything. Then if that is not screwed up enough we can use Florida's Department of Children and Family Services as the agency from hell. They can mess up absolutely anything. They even are able to kill little children assigned to their care.
For several years sociologists have anticipated that almost all human labor would soon be obsolete. They have already issued a plan that has merit. The idea is to issue a full pay check, not a low level check, but a robust check, to each adult. Then require some form of gambling of a portion of that pay check so that some people would tend to have more money than others. By having people who gamble more skillfully win more often the social pecking order is preserved.
The real bust out will occur when we incorporate a machine in such a way that all money earned by the machine less the usual taxes will be self invested back into building a stronger and more able machine. That could be something no more dramatic than a powerful computer system that invests in the stock market and upon gaining funds keeps extending its data base and electronic abilities but never pays out to humans. Or it could be as basic as a robotic farm tractor that upgrades the model of the tractor constantly and then sells it and keeps the returns to fund building an ever better farm tractor.
The point being that not only is human labor challenged but human ownership and investment will also be severely challenged. Remember the Supreme Court declaring that corporations have basic rights. That corporation could be nothing more than a couple of machines combining resources with the humans spawning the self feeding corporation. Frankly I like the idea.
So when I say that George W. Bush rapes little boys in public restrooms you feel that I should be punished. Then there is one huge issue yet mentioned. Since when do schools have any right at all to control kids at home? Do they claim they made these posts on school grounds?
Then there is the free speech issue. There are teachers who have serious mental problems which they hide. Some of them hate children and deliberately do things that they know will upset kids. I know one that bragged about tripping students in the stair wells that he did not like in front of a class. Yet school administrations will often hide these closet abusers. Sometimes kids will protest by putting forth false allegations. The other kids understand that the stated complaint is only a sort of bid to invite others to join them in hope of relief.
One positive relief would be to have a panel not connected to the school or school system that investigated school employees and had the ability to dismiss rogue employees.
You may be able to encrypt beyond the government's ability to decrypt But how can you handle a court forcing you to reveal the contents? Worse yet I would not be so certain that simply using encryption may in itself be enough to attract one of our current star chamber types of discovery.
Freedom of speech is not lost at the moment it is squelched. The freedom to speak dies the moment you understand that your speech might be inspected or that you may be required to reveal your information. Simply knowing that the freedom can vanish at the will of authorities kills speech.
Think about book publishers forced to pay lawyers to go through a book page by page before publication. You know how it works. You spin a story about superman and some kid puts a bed sheet on his shoulders and jumps of his roof. You get sued. So you are chilled. You must not even publish harmless fantasy stories. If you draw a cartoon you must fear that some idiot will think the cartoon girl is under age and off to prison you go. What freedom?
It is not recording video that gives the law entry into most situations. It is recording voice. Security systems are usually video only. This is probably frightened, corrupt, public officials fearing it is too easy to catch them in their corruption if voice recording is allowed. All people should have the right to covertly record voice and video anywhere at anytime. Anything outside the walls of their home is public by definition.
People don't think these classic scams could ever suck them in but if they are done in an artful way they actually can sucker people in. Most of these con artists lack the ability but there are a few out there with serious skills that really can sink a strong man's boat.
I have noticed that only people with skin commit crimes. I have found no case of any crime ever being committed by any person totally devoid of skin. Those criminals who post on Craig's have skin every time.
My conclusions are at least as rational as the conclusions of the group that did this idiotic study of Craigslist.
Slashdot Mirror
Without humans having a thing to do with it those islands form all the time. They form to a degree that the state has a machine that goes in and destroys the island. All that happens is that any irregularity that causes a bottom to be slightly shallower in a spot will tend to attract plants which over time build a thicker and thicker mat of cast off materials held in place by the roots of the plants. At a certain point the mat becomes heavy enough to actually press down against the bottom and trees and shrubs flourish making the little islands even more solid.
The device that eats these islands looks like a paddle wheel boat with the paddle wheel in the very front of the boat. That wheel beats into the vegetation and pushes it onto a barge like deck. The operator keeps the wheel chopping at the island until the entire island is loaded on the barge. Sadly large nuimbers of bass and other fish as well as snakes and turtles are also loaded onto the barges.
I am pretty sour on the notions of copyright and patents in general. If we had a literary and music patent that expired after five year or so and could not be extended it would seem like a reasonable concept. Music is even more of an issue as music is broadcast. Broadcasting is like throwing bird seed all over town. You simply have no control of which birds get the seed or how often they make use of it. Then it gets even worse. Suppose someone writes a catchy tune for voice and I want to play that tune on trombone. It has never been offered for trombone and is entirely different in nature than when sung. So look how copyright has reached out and covered all instruments playing the piece either together or in separately. Then the written score for the music instead of the music as offered to the ear also requires some magical cloak of copyright protection. I highly recommend copying any damn thing you wish to copy as the rules are an outrage and submission to outrageous rules is bad for the human soul.
Since when do we wish to reward those who lack emotional control above those who remain calm? The ranting screaming caller should be the one served last.
Then there are the other situations in which a veteran, quite used to heavy combat, remains dead calm while trying to summon help. Or an emotionally detached party who is simply not at all upset by mayhem and loss of life but fills the role of trying to help by making the emergency call. The funny thing is that the ones who are not upset are the ones likely to describe well the exact location, number of injuries and be able to warn approaching rescue workers of hazards at the scene such as a downed power line on the north side of the wreck or that pesky sniper who caused the wreck in the first place.
We are closer to the edge of the cliff than most people imagine. For example the recent tragedy in Japan just might collapse the Japanese economy to a degree that a cascade of international banking failures is touched off causing a huge depression world wide.
At the school level we need to neuter most kids allowing only those who are the brightest and strongest to reproduce.
There has always been a suffering factor built into changes in technology spilling over and causing changes in society. Usually the suffering has been rather confined. The buggy whip workers were not such a large group of workers that the new automobile market destroyed. But now things are different and less predictable. A great example is in office staff eliminated by the cell phone. As cell phones took over the small company was able to get rid of millions of girl Friday types that had answered the phones and greeted walk in customers in the past. We are now displacing workers so quickly that economic chaos is descending upon us. After all, earners pay taxes whereas the unemployed consume tax dollars.
Back at home the US has no clue with what to do with labor. Just as we saw people suffer loss of life and health trying to save victims of 9/11 now we see brave,skilled, laborers in Japan entering death zones in order to save the public. I am certain that all that really matters to the republicans is that those workers do not have a union nor want help while they die from radiation sickness just as they will not take care of firemen and police with busted lungs and cancers from the WTC rescue efforts. Frankly if we suffer another attack perhaps our public employees will smarten up and stay far back from such catastrophic events.
In most places game and fish will be exhausted in a day or two if the population gets hungry. Living off the land is always difficult but with a few hundred million people scavenging for all their food it will be impossible to sustain human life even in remote areas. People will follow the food to every little corner.
In a great emergency my chances are very poor of survival. Age and disabilities don't help.
But on a larger scale the real issue is always avoided. Over population and population density are the big nightmare. Haiti is over populated and that leads to poverty, poor construction, poor choice of housing locations and everything needed to amplify any catastrophe. Japan is not poor. The construction must be pretty good as the amount of metal in the debris indicates better than average construction. But because of the population density numerous nuclear power plants were at hand. Further the amount of chemicals spilled from the tsunami as well as issues such as grave yard leakage, gasoline tanks and industrial chemicals spilled and the close proximity of individuals spreading any disease outbreaks is a nightmare. Imagine the same wave hitting the shore and a total of only ten thousand citizens exposed to the hazards. Japan could easily manage the results if the population was not so great. Worse yet, just like our own. their social systems are so locked together than one problem cause many others even in areas not directly affected by the quakes or the waves. We now have a GM factory shut down in Louisiana due to a lack of parts from Japan.
If this tragedy destroys the economy of Japan a world wide depression could easily be a consequence.
Any American officials or companies who stood to gain from this bribery may well face charges in American courts.
Palm Beach County Florida just caught more than a dozen public employees accepting bribes and gifts. Apparently the range of jail sentences will rand from 14 years to 300 years in prison. Florida can go insane over bribes or corruption. We had a land developer near Tampa that moved survey stakes one foot in order to create one additional home lot. He was sentenced to 150 years. And we no longer have good behavior or early release. At most he can get 15% sentence reduction for the convenience of the prison administration. Perhaps the Feds need this kind of sentencing.
They just passed a law which gives schools outrageous powers over students even in their own homes. Bullying is not such a simple issue. Young males often push each other to "buck up". That is to meet the mark, make the grade, ford the stream, beat the hazard or whatever. Name calling and a bit of pushing around are all part of this process. You see it when recruits go into military training. You certainly see it from both staff and students on football and other sports teams.
Yes there are bullies who are sort of mini terrorists who are a pain to all in schools. But many a milder child has made his mark in maturing by fighting back against a bully. This is just normal human behavior.
As far as youngsters who hang themselves over bullying think about how many young boys and girls commit suicide because they are charmed by members of the opposite sex and then rejected. Love is surely more lethal than the school bully who delivers a punch to the nose. Perhaps these school administrators should consider requiring girls and boys to dress in baggy sack cloth with ashes smeared all over them so that we don't see love sick teens offing themselves by the light of the moon.
Never give an inch. How can anything filmed from the street violate anyone's privacy? This crap is absurd.
If total transparency is in play all crime stops dead in its tracks. Every little action would be recorded and available for all to see. Every conversation would be permanently held for all to review. The savings to society would be enormous. Even a doctor prescribing a test too frequently would raise alarms. Lawyers who get poor results for clients or who charge unusually high fees would be outed quickly. Teachers would have every word and action saved fro all to review. The school bully could not get away with the slightest offence. Salesmen would be restrained to the simple, plane truth. Adultery would tend to vanish. Even a high school girl flirting with two boys would quickly be exposed. All in all it sounds great.
Some really strange law and political thinking starts in Texas and infests states north from Texas all the way to the Canadian border. Only God knows what has become of the minds of the people in those states. What is wrong with these people?
The freedom to record all that is around me or said to me is basic. The freedom to know where I have been and be able to offer a proof as to where I am is also basic. Imagine that a crime takes place and the criminal looks a lot like you and also drives a white Toyota. Instead of being half way to a conviction in the legal system you have proof of where you were when the crime went down. Also imagine the cops being able to do a sweeping search and being able to find witnesses and criminals who were within the same area at the time of the crime.
The idea that others may know does not imply a loss of freedom. It does create restraints upon criminals.
Probably the largest amount of criminal activity comes fro women on dating sites trying to scam men into sending money to enable travel to the man. If the government gets serious millions of American women could get severe prison sentences for that game. In law it is not so difficult to offer proof that a woman has promised to travel to live with 75 different men all over the world on the same day and taken money from many of them.
This is an issue like stealing bicycles. Bicycle thefts total far more than bank robbery losses and more deaths result from bicycle thefts than bank robberies as well. Yet a bank robber can easily get 20 years for a first offence and a bicycle thief will rarely be put in prison. We have it backwards.
Stem cells are beyond any argument of ethics or morals. A very strong argument can be made that humans are a filthy, worthless species and that allowing any human baby to be born is the ultimate crime against nature and any act that prevents a human from being born is the ultimate good. After all look at what human life has done to this planet and to each other as well.
So who are these wizards who declare one thing good and the next thing bad? Who appointed any keeper of public morals or wizard of public ethics? Worse yet these creeps find ways to make a living judging what is and is not ethical.
With a true free press nothing may ever be proscribed. A regulated press, regardless of whether well or poorly regulated, is far from being free. The concept that speech deemed offensive or dangerous may be regulated rapes the very foundations of freedom. The consequences of speech poorly received could be social but never carry legal penalties or civil fines etc..
Somehow people also have some sort of assumption of capitalism as part of the Constitution. In fact there is nothing at all to even imply that capitalism be permitted within our system of government. The ability to tax for the general good and maintenance of the nation and its people is a bold faced declaration of socialism.
The patent service is not perfectly screwed up. The Florida Voter Registration System should take charge. If they can steal an election as they already have they can screw up most anything. Then if that is not screwed up enough we can use Florida's Department of Children and Family Services as the agency from hell. They can mess up absolutely anything. They even are able to kill little children assigned to their care.
For several years sociologists have anticipated that almost all human labor would soon be obsolete. They have already issued a plan that has merit. The idea is to issue a full pay check, not a low level check, but a robust check, to each adult. Then require some form of gambling of a portion of that pay check so that some people would tend to have more money than others. By having people who gamble more skillfully win more often the social pecking order is preserved.
The real bust out will occur when we incorporate a machine in such a way that all money earned by the machine less the usual taxes will be self invested back into building a stronger and more able machine. That could be something no more dramatic than a powerful computer system that invests in the stock market and upon gaining funds keeps extending its data base and electronic abilities but never pays out to humans. Or it could be as basic as a robotic farm tractor that upgrades the model of the tractor constantly and then sells it and keeps the returns to fund building an ever better farm tractor.
The point being that not only is human labor challenged but human ownership and investment will also be severely challenged. Remember the Supreme Court declaring that corporations have basic rights. That corporation could be nothing more than a couple of machines combining resources with the humans spawning the self feeding corporation. Frankly I like the idea.
I doubt that you actually meant to say "racially" reform but intended to say radically reform.
So when I say that George W. Bush rapes little boys in public restrooms you feel that I should be punished. Then there is one huge issue yet mentioned. Since when do schools have any right at all to control kids at home? Do they claim they made these posts on school grounds?
Then there is the free speech issue. There are teachers who have serious mental problems which they hide. Some of them hate children and deliberately do things that they know will upset kids. I know one that bragged about tripping students in the stair wells that he did not like in front of a class. Yet school administrations will often hide these closet abusers. Sometimes kids will protest by putting forth false allegations. The other kids understand that the stated complaint is only a sort of bid to invite others to join them in hope of relief.
One positive relief would be to have a panel not connected to the school or school system that investigated school employees and had the ability to dismiss rogue employees.
You may be able to encrypt beyond the government's ability to decrypt But how can you handle a court forcing you to reveal the contents? Worse yet I would not be so certain that simply using encryption may in itself be enough to attract one of our current star chamber types of discovery.
Freedom of speech is not lost at the moment it is squelched. The freedom to speak dies the moment you understand that your speech might be inspected or that you may be required to reveal your information. Simply knowing that the freedom can vanish at the will of authorities kills speech.
Think about book publishers forced to pay lawyers to go through a book page by page before publication. You know how it works. You spin a story about superman and some kid puts a bed sheet on his shoulders and jumps of his roof. You get sued. So you are chilled. You must not even publish harmless fantasy stories. If you draw a cartoon you must fear that some idiot will think the cartoon girl is under age and off to prison you go. What freedom?
It is not recording video that gives the law entry into most situations. It is recording voice. Security systems are usually video only. This is probably frightened, corrupt, public officials fearing it is too easy to catch them in their corruption if voice recording is allowed. All people should have the right to covertly record voice and video anywhere at anytime. Anything outside the walls of their home is public by definition.
People don't think these classic scams could ever suck them in but if they are done in an artful way they actually can sucker people in. Most of these con artists lack the ability but there are a few out there with serious skills that really can sink a strong man's boat.
I have noticed that only people with skin commit crimes. I have found no case of any crime ever being committed by any person totally devoid of skin. Those criminals who post on Craig's have skin every time.
My conclusions are at least as rational as the conclusions of the group that did this idiotic study of Craigslist.